Posted: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 09:45 AM - 35,217 Readers

By: Rachel Rice

When the Hill Country wildlands were wilder and the residents relied on the help of their neighbors in emergency situations in 1963 , the Hudson Bend Volunteer Fire Department was formed.

Around the time that the Lakeway Inn was founded, the first Lakeway residents attended a fish fry hosted by Dick Neidhardt, Jess Akin and Bill Smith, longtime resident Bob Jarvis wrote in the Lake Travis View in 1994. Together, those 200 people raised $180 to begin the fire department.

The volunteer fire department would protect a 140-square mile area from Comanche Trail south on RM 620 to Texas 71 and west just beyond Hamilton Pool Road, according to “Hudson Bend and the Birth of Lake Travis: Transforming the Hills West of Austin” by Carole McIntosh Sikes. The department’s first chief was John Stamper, Mike Millsap wrote. These days, Lake Travis Fire Rescue is staffed by paid and trained firefighters and protects Emergency Services District No. 6, a considerably larger area than the original district - 110 miles, to be exact.


“We’re pretty much 50 years old,” current Fire Chief Bobby Abbott said. Abbott was hired in 1996, around the time the fire district was transitioning from volunteer-staffed to paid firefighters.

Back in the volunteer days, the Ladies’ Auxiliary was the driving force behind raising money for the fire department as well as many other good deeds in the community. The 47 charter members, organized in 1969, raised $1,049 at their first spaghetti dinner-dance event, Jarvis wrote in a 1994 Lake Travis View story.

“Meanwhile, the HBVFD had purchased its first fire truck – a 1946 Ford ‘pumper’ capable of hauling 400 to 500 gallons of water,” Jarvis wrote. “It needed a paint job and tires (later donated), and the pump needed an overhaul. However, ‘the kids discovered the siren worked’ during the dinner-dance.”

The fire department’s one fatality occurred in 1978, Jarvis wrote. Chief Richard Willis died fighting a grass fire off of RM 620. His wife, Elinor, succeeded him as the first female fire chief. She provided funding to build two more fire stations within the district. The 1970s were also when the Lakeway Fire Department was integrated into the Hudson Bend Fire Department, accordint to ltfr.org.

The ‘department’ became a ‘district’ in 1987, Millsap wrote, when the Texas legislature passed a bill to create Emergency Service Districts and implement up to a 10-cent ad valorem tax within the service area.

Throughout the years of their existence, the auxiliary would expand their fundraising repertoire to dinners, garage sales and of course the annual Green Santa blowout event, gathering toys for underprivileged children in the area in a huge effort. Bob’s wife Jeanne Jarvis was twice president of the auxiliary, and reminisces about her earliest days as a member.

“In 1993, a neighbor coerced me when I moved here,” she said of joining the auxiliary. “She said ‘oh it’s once a month’ and I went with her and it was so interesting so I joined and the following September they elected me president, would you believe it?”

In the volunteer days, some of the auxiliary members also served on the “Bucket Brigade,” a troop of women who would bring the firefighters food and supplies while they were on the scene of a fire.

“We would get a call from the dispatcher, and then we’d get cold cuts and bread and pack up refreshments and go to the scene,” Jeanne Jarvis said. “The first scene I went to, I was like a tourist. Those were the good old days back then, they really were.”

Bob Jarvis wasn’t officially a volunteer firefighter, he said, but he helped sometimes.

“Way back when they put in a call for a brush fire, and I went out there to the Steiner Ranch area, and we were using wet toe sacks to beat out the fire,” he said.

Former Chief Jim Linardos recalls the last days of transitioning from a volunteer district to a paid district. Linardos took over the fire district in 2006.

“There were a few (volunteers) left, and I was part of transitioning those guys into a support unit as opposed to the primary firefighting unit,” Linardos said. “The training hours are arduous to be kept up with, so we gave them the mission of doing three or four things the current organization wasn’t doing very well … air bottles, getting light on the scene real quick and getting rehab to the incident.”

Debbie Tanner-Jacobs, a former Emergency Services District No. 6 Commission Board president, said that at a certain point in the early 2000s, residents began to expect service from the fire district on par with the Austin Fire Department. Millsap wrote that in 2001, legislature authorized “overlap” districts that could levy a 10 cent ad valorem tax upon voter approval, and in 2003 voters approved a $3.5 million bond package to construct Fire Station No. 5 in Steiner Ranch.

“The area as a whole continued to grow so exponentially, and we had to try to keep up with that as well as people’s expectations,” she said. “We were so closely affiliated with Austin in general that the perception was they were getting municipal-type services for public safety, but we never had the financial resources to get to that level.”

The Jarvises remember a lot of defining moments for the fire district, including Vincent’s on the Lake burning down and the struggles and successes of the Ladies’ Auxiliary throughout the years, which at one point reached 500 members. The auxiliary always made sure the district had the supplementary equipment it needed and that the firefighters were taken care of, Abbott said. In 2012, the auxiliary ceased service for good, ending an era for the fire district.

“They had pages and pages of activities they were doing,” Abbott said. “They were a strong force, especially with Green Santa. They organized that whole thing – they were doing the gathering and preparing of Christmas presents and dinner for 147 families in need, which is a lot of work. … My memories of the Ladies’ Auxiliary are so humbling to see what they did and the amount of impact they had on the community is outstanding.”

*  Story Contributed by: Rachel Rice